The invention relates to rollers for conveyors, both for roller conveyors and as idlers for belt conveyors. These rollers consist generally of a tube or pipe provided with one rolling contact bearing inserted into each end.
There are several methods of fabricating conveyor rollers: A roller may be produced from a pipe of a relatively strong wall thickness by internally machining its two ends to permit insertion and smooth fitting of a ball- or roller bearing. Another method, while using a thick-walled pipe consists in heating its ends and reducing the diameters in a swage block, afterwards machining their insides to the diameter of the bearings. Still another operation for reducing the end diameters is by spinning on a lathe using a mandrel. And finally fabricating conveyor rollers from thin-walled pipes includes welding short pieces of pipe of smaller diameter into the ends and machining them to the required diameter.
All these methods of fabrication are expensive and time-consuming and it is the object of the present invention to provide a method of preparing the ends of thin-walled pipes without heating and machining.
It is a main object to form the ends of pipes in a way that rolling contact bearings can be readily inserted into the ends and be secured without any auxiliary components.
It is another object to provide tools for forming the ends of conveyor rollers, which are simple and available at low cost.
And it is a further object to fabricate conveyor rollers of any required length in short operation times by using the above forming tools.